


FOLLOW YOU INTO THE DARK

by kattegatsun



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Athelnar - Freeform, Athelstan is a cinnamon roll, Ecbert has issues, I know nothing of Norway, I make up the geography and locations because I'm useless, I'm so sorry, M/M, Ragnar falls faster than that one time I tried roller-skating, Rating currently M but might become E, but also hella obsessed with his past life, every cliche ever, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:23:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattegatsun/pseuds/kattegatsun
Summary: The one where good British boy Athelstan goes to Uni in Norway because he remembers his past life with Ragnar and gets tired of waiting for him to show up and sweep Athelstan away. Also I make Kattegat a city because I know nothing about Norway. Tread carefully, everything inside is cliche modern Vikings trash!





	1. INTO THE DARK

The first thing Athelstan remembered from before was Ragnar’s face. It was covered in blood and impossibly, devastatingly sad; and when Athelstan woke up his cheeks were wet and he felt so completely overwhelmed by it he marched down the corridor barefoot and climbed in with his parents - something he did very rarely despite being five and easily impressed.

“What is it, Athelstan?” His mum wondered sleepily, her hand brushing hair out of his face.

“I wonder why the man in my dream was so upset, mummy,” he asked, taking his ideas for granted as much as any child that age.

“What man, love?” She frowned, concerned.

“The man with blue eyes,” Athelstan said surely, “And a bloody face.”

And that is how it started. In hindsight Athelstan was almost glad that his earliest memory of this life was of Ragnar from before. It gave him a sense of connection and hope that everything that happened – in both his lives – did so for a reason.

He remembered much more since that – Lindisfarne, Kattegat, Wessex.

By the time he was nine he remembered Ecbert, and soon after Aethelwulf and Judith.

“You used to be a king,” he said matter-of-factly, straying away from the flock of kids running around Wulf’s villa decorated for his tenth birthday.

The man looked at Athelstan distractedly over his laptop and raised his eyebrows in amusement.

“And was I any good?” he considered with faux seriousness, an expression Athelstan came to recognize fairly quickly.

“You were a good king,” he informed Ecbert after a momentary consideration, “But a bad Christian.”

Ecbert stared at him dumbfounded for a second and then exploded with laughter. Athelstan was a welcomed guest at their villa ever since, even when they were seventeen and Wulf gave him two weeks of silent treatment over Judith. In hindsight, Athelstan didn’t think it was worth the fuss. He didn’t fancy Judith half as much as she fancied him, and she probably didn’t fancy him half as much as Wulf fancied her. But they were seventeen and hormone-crazy, and she told Athelstan that she loved him, which surely led him into a three months long emotionally-draining relationship that only started because he felt like he owed her something in return.

Wulf got over it eventually, and if Athelstan was honest, Ecbert seemed the most relieved of the three of them, that that whole drama was well over with. If Athelstan was completely honest, he thought Ecbert was unsettlingly kind considering that Athelstan’s made his son miserable for whole three months and wasn’t necessarily sorry about it.

Eventually, he found himself more and more restless in the months leading up to his eighteen’s birthday. Wulf seemed to rub him the wrong way more often than not, Judith was coming on too strong, even Ecbert seemed too present, suddenly set on enrolling Athelstan into his Art restoration business. Athelstan’s own family on the contrary grew distant, his multiple siblings never too close with him in the first place, now seemed unreachably far, and his good Christian parents were too busy trying to support them all to bother fixing any minor fallouts.

And the worst of them all was Ragnar. Ragnar who was supposed to come and sweep Athelstan away. Ragnar who was supposed to find him and make everything have a reason and a meaning. Ragnar who was constantly on his mind, Ragnar whom he’d drawn more times than was entirely sane, Ragnar whom he dreamt of, whom he needed, whom he wanted… And who wasn’t there.

None of it seemed right or meaningful anymore, so after a while Athelstan decided that somebody had to make it so, even if that somebody had to be himself. And so, as a good boy he was raised to be, Athelstan graduated high school and saved up money, and announced as quietly as it was possible with a bomb as big as that, that he was going to Uni in Norway.

“We could’ve had a future here, together, Athelstan,” Judith said, her pale eyes brimming with tears, “We could’ve had something good. We still can… Just don’t leave me.”

“You should consider all the things you are depraving yourself of, going God knows where! What future is there for you?” Ecbert demanded, his voice bordering between anger and disbelief.

His future was with Ragnar, as was his past. It’s always been Ragnar, - Athelstan thought, but of course he couldn’t say so, so all he did was smile and assure everyone that it was going to be fine.

And finally, he said his goodbyes, boarded the plane and threw himself at the mercy of North for the second time in his lives. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hope you enjoyed! Leave comments and kudos to let me know I should continue, and I'm sorry in advance for a mess this is going to become ~xo


	2. CLOSE BEHIND

Everything went wrong pretty much the moment Athelstan landed. 

First he waited for the longest time for his luggage just to discover that it was lost, which he decided wasn't the most horrible thing that could've happened and figured he'd approach the news reasonably and as an adult he now was. After all, the airline did assure him that his stuff will be found and shipped to him eventually.

But then, it was only the beginning. 

When Athelstan - exhausted and frustrated - finally arrived at the Kattegat University, it turned out that there wasn't a promised dorm for him tostay in, and worst of all they didn't seem to be able to make the necessary arrangement for at least two weeks. An excessively apologetic, yet aggravatingly unhelpful administration lady could only provide him with directions to a nearby hotel, which Athelstan discovered upon his arrival, he could not afford to stay in for more than a few nights if he still wanted to make it through the first semester with the money he'd saved. 

Laying down in bed that night, Athelstan felt kicked completely out of his element. Somehow two lifetimes of experience surviving in this messed up world did not prepare him for this, and so he felt impossibly terrifyingly alone. His restless mind refused sleep and so he just twisted and turned a plain thin cross he wore around his neck and worried about Ragnar, and whether he was even there, whether he was even alive along with Athelstan.

In the next few days he discovered several things, first - that Kattegat the city was even more beautiful and unpredictable than Kattegat the settlement he remembered, it was turquoise and blue, and alive, and the sky above it seemed wild and endless, and the streets were complicated and leading him to the shore seemingly at every turn. Second was that he turned out even less prepared to making it there than he was the first time around, Athelstan's every attempt at finding a cheeper apartment or a room to rent failing miserably. And third - which he discovered on his first night of being officially homeless - it was cold, especially at night.

He slept in many places - on firm narrow beds of the monastery, on freezing windswept and soggy ships, in barns and on hard packed ground, but that was a long time ago and the soft spoiled body he had now did not accept a cold park bench as even a mildly satisfying resting spot. Not to mention that Athelstan still was quite reasonably terrified by at least four different scenarios in which this was going to land him in trouble.

It wasn't until his third night on that same bench that he woke up startled by loud, undoubtedly drunken voices and roaring laugh. 

Athelstan froze, knees hugged to his chest for warmth and prayed for them to go away, to pay him no attention, to just pass. 

No such luck.

"What do we have here," a vaguely familiar voice yelped just as a thin drawn-out figure bent over him, outlined by a faraway streetlight. Athelstan couldn't make out the face in the shadowed insides of a hood, but he had a good enough guess.

"Rollo, come," the hood squealed again.

"What have you got there," a rough, scratchy voice bellowed; a hooded figure now joined by a broad silhouette waving a bottle around.

Athelstan wished he could find his voice to speak, make his muscles move, anything… But all he could do is stare and listen to his heart hammer in his chest, and pray for the best.

"You should not be sleeping here," the hood continued, his hands restless and expressive, "This is not a place for sleep if you don't want to get in trouble, is it now."

He giggled, a nasty wild high-pitched sound, making Athelstan's breath catch in his throat before it left his trembling lips in a shudder.

And then the third voice joined them, and he stopped breathing altogether, his body wasn't even shaking anymore, it was just holding onto the sound of it, sighing after a lifetime of anticipation.

"Leave him alone you drunken fools," it ordered with quiet authority and a faintest hint of exasperation, "Go on."

The silhouettes over Athelstan paused, their heads turning away from him for a long moment after which the broader one - Rollo, he was sure he knew the name before - shrugged and moved along. The hood lingered, his presence menacing and unpredictable for a second, until he too shrugged though in a more lopsided fidgety way, clicked his tongue in annoyance and marched away.

Athelstan felt his limbs go slack, fading tension rendering them limp and useless, not that he got a lot of use of them in their previous state. He pushed up on his elbows almost unconsciously chasing the voice of his savior.

"Are you alright?" It spoke again, closer this time, and in the darkness it took Athelstan a second to find the source. 

"Yes, thanks, I guess," he managed, his voice hoarse and shaky.

Athelstan willed his eyes to focus, to take in as much detail as he could in sparse lighting. It wasn't a lot, another tall well-shaped silhouette sporting what seemed like a leather jacket, hands in the pockets, posture loose. His heart gave out a heavy thump. 

"They're all bark and no bite," the quiet voice replied now with a note of amusement, "They would've done you no harm. As long as you didn't go waving your fists, at least."

Somehow Athelstan doubted that, but he didn't want to say so, afraid to break the flow of the conversation.

"That's not exactly my style," he amended. 

"So I thought," the other exhaled, stepping closer and taking the edge of the bench causing Athelstan to bolt up into a more civilized sitting position, "What's your name, kid?"

"Athelstan," he muttered immediately, the sounds chasing each other in a hurry to escape his desert of a mouth.

"I'm Ragnar."

Athelstan let out a breath that sounded like it was kicked out of him. 

His heart gave out another heavy thump and stopped beating altogether.

It couldn't be…

He licked his lips, felt his hands begin to shake again, now for entirely different reasons.

"Ragnar," he echoed, unable to help himself.

"Yes," Ragnar confirmed curiously, and suddenly Athelstan couldn't escape the familiar feeling of his eyes searching his face, though they probably didn't find much either; and then there was a well-known scent of leather and earth, and Ragnar all around him, and he couldn't doubt it even if he wanted to.

"What are you doing here, Athelstan?" Ragnar wondered, the same quiet authority he used before seeping into his voice again.

"Waiting," he replied softly, without thinking, and even though it was the first thing that came into his mind it was as true as Athelstan could allow himself to be.

He could say he was waiting for his Uni to sort out his living arrangements if he absolutely had to, he could say he was waiting till morning and it was true enough, but the truth was that he'd been waiting for Ragnar, waiting for the longest time and there he was.

"Well," Ragnar huffed out rising, "Don't go waiting for too long, my friend. Your luck is stretching thin."

"We might have to agree to disagree, Ragnar," Athelstan replied suddenly, his belated awe-struck grin audible in his voice.

Ragnar only hummed in response, nodded, and hurried after his friends.

Athelstan stared after him for a second, his lips still stretched wide and then it started dawning on him.

Ragnar. 

Ragnar he's been waiting for all this time was there in his grasp, close enough to touch, so impossibly, overwhelmingly close… And now he wasn't anymore.

Athelstan's smile crumbled as quickly as it took over.

He fell back against his bench and watched his breath cloud over his head, blinking slowly.

He had Ragnar right there, and he blew it.

How was he going to find him now? How was he going to explain? How was he going to make it if these seconds in pitch blackness was all he got till the end of this life?

"Athelstan?" Ragnar's voice, a cautious, almost phantom of a whisper…

His worn out, sleep deprived mind must be playing tricks on him.

"Athelstan," it came louder this time, making him jump and turn so fast he almost gave himself a whiplash.

It wasn't his worn out mind, it was Ragnar real and in the flesh.

Athelstan thought he might actually cry out of sheer relief, though he thought it might not be in his best interests.

"Ragnar?" He whispered back, simply having to repeat that name now that he had a reason to.

"Oh, good, you're still here," the other muttered softly with an undertone Athelstan couldn't quite define, "I thought you might be gone by the time I came back."

"Why did you?" he exhaled helplessly, "Come back, I mean."

"I don't know yet," Ragnar admitted sounding surprised himself, "Now come, we should go." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a mess and a cliche, but hopefully it's at lest mildly entertaining :) Leave comments to let me know what you think and whether I should continue! Kudos are greatif you wanna leave any, too. Thanks for reading ~xo


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